Ron Paul Rewind: ‘Do Not Attack Iraq!’ (2002)

On the eve of President Bush’s war on Iraq, as the House debated the authorization for the use of force that it ultimately gave the president, then-Rep. Ron Paul stood up to oppose the coming war from every possible angle. The process was wrong; the precedent set by launching a pre-emptive war would come back to haunt us; the age-old Christian “Just War” doctrine had not been met, thus the war was immoral; the war would cost a fortune; and so on. He tried every approach to get his colleagues to listen.

With the rapid fall of Iraq to an al-Qaeda affiliated army, the ISIS, in progress this week — an al-Qaeda that did not exist in Iraq before the invasion — we can look back and wish that the rest of the Congress and the president had listened to Ron Paul’s warnings and pleas…